“OoooOOOOOHHHHH, whoa!” This had to be the worst hangover Jonathan Seymour had ever had. His tongue had a foul taste to it that crossed the boundary of cotton mouth full on into chewing on grains of the Sahara encased on a bicycle tire tube. His eyes ached from the light coming straight through his closed eye lids. He realized that his eyelids were indeed closed as he could very distinctly see veins in the skin. Wait, that didn’t make since…

That’s when he gagged. Oh my god did that hurt, he coughed but his throat constricted around more of the same Sahara sand painted tire tube. He retched and retched and the sand coated tube started to move just a fraction. Jonathan realized he was going to choke to death. He was choking on his own tongue.

Then something was pulling his tongue out of his throat. No that wasn’t right, he could not feel his tongue being pinched nor pulled. There actually was something in his throat and it wasn’t his tongue, or at least not his tongue that was choking him. After five excruciating seconds of pain, the gagging tube of torture was removed. He gasped and his throat felt like it was on fire.

His mouth attempted to shut but something was preventing its full movement. He couldn’t quite feel his own lips.

Then a gusher of ice cold water shot into his mouth and down his throat. Again he felt like he was going to choke to death, no he was drowning!

Wait! He was so confused.

The water slowly soaked into his mouth and throat, and then his mouth and throat went numb.

It had to be some kind of medicine. He could not taste anything now and his mouth and throat felt as if he had just received a shot of Novocain.

He could feel some pressure through his teeth and the bones in his jaw. The obstruction that had kept his mouth open was being removed. It felt like a mouth brace or maybe a mouth guard like one he had worn as a kid in tae kwon doh classes. He flexed his mouth and then shut it. He could tell that his mouth was not fully shut, and then a new sensation.

FIRE!

He was suddenly inhaling fire, in his mouth and down his throat.

He started to scream and choked on fire going into his lungs. Then his mouth, throat and lungs started to feel normal. He realized that another fluid had been sprayed into his mouth. This one tasted like marshmallow in liquid form. It left his teeth coated with fuzzy feeling cotton candy. He attempted to swallow and realized that he had no saliva in his mouth. He exercised his tongue against the glands in his mouth and was just able to coax a small amount of saliva into his mouth.

That’s when he was blinded.

Fire, this time in his eyes. The red veins were gone and all he could see and feel was white hot light. Another spray hit his face and he was blind again and soothed. The fire was gone, some light remained but it was completely foggy.

One more emergency averted he refocused on his mouth. It was slowly coming back to life and starting to lubricate with saliva. He heard a very loud noise behind his head, he must be laying down. No he must be hanging upside down. No that wasn’t it, he was completely confused now.

He heard something bang into something else hard and then a curse. The curse was in Arabic. He thought to himself, ‘How do I know that is Arabic?’

The opaque light started to clear and he looked out. He could not quite make out his surroundings in a room that seemed infinite in length, slightly dark up close and immensely black in the distance. His eyes contracted and everything went out of focus again, then slowly, even more slowly than last time started to come back again.

“What happened?” he whispered.

“Yes indeed. That is a fine question.” responded a voice in English, a British type of English, no that wasn’t right. It was a different accent all together but spoken with British dialog.

Jonathan’s eyes came fully into focus now and he looked up to behold a very tall man flying in the air with an extremely long beard down to his navel, dark eyes wearing a unitard that looked like a wrestling singlet. Poking through the beard at his waist Jonathan could see that the man had an erection. The size of the erection was not significant but oddly the erection was pointing straight out, perpendicular as opposed to being pointed up towards his belly or chest.

Two seconds later Jonathan realized three more things. He had a crazy almost painful erection himself. The man he was looking at was Osama Bin Laden and he was surrounded by dozens of Jihadists similarly dressed and holy shit, they all had erections too!

“Fuck, I’ve died and gone to heaven and here are my virgins!” Jonathan exclaimed.

Tools I use

My day job involves blogging professionally and designing/building websites running on WordPress. I also train teach others how to do this around the country. See more at my company website Softduit Media

I don't write the actual chapters here in WordPress. Originally, I tried out NewNovelist and REALLY REALLY liked it. It helped me stay focused on covering what needed to be covered while methodically making progress towards a visible goal both in terms of tangible words and in plot and character development.

But it was very buggy when I tried it.

Then I switched to a combination of several different tools that included MindManager (I am also a MindManager trainer, but don't work as one any longer.) After I started writing more on my iPad I also used iThoughtsHD, a mind mapping tool, Dropbox for shuttling files between devices and audio files to Joe Klein doing the voice over production.

I later found Scrivener which is like NewNovelist but on some serious steroids. I write on a PC or on my iPad and Scrivener is really designed for Mac users and PC users as an after thought. So syncing files between my desktop and Scrivener is technically possible but not at all practical. So I'm doing a number of manual things to gather up the tidbits where ever I get them and arrange them in Scrivener.

Some of the audio work I do myself is done in Audacity, I have a Tapco 100 mixer, a Rode Procaster microphone with lots of accessories.